Baking & Snack - April 2009 - 16

NEWSFRONT
Obama discusses food safety,
names head of FDA

Calling the protection of the food supply
"one of the most fundamental responsibilities (of) government," President Barack
Obama said his administration will take
significant steps to enhance US food safety.
The president spoke on the subject
during a weekly video address from
the White House in March. The speech,
in which he named the new commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was devoted to food issues even as the Obama administration
pursues an ambitious agenda aimed at
reversing the economic downturn and
reforming the nation's health care and
education systems.
The speech also followed the introduction in Congress of three bills with bipartisan support to modernize and strengthen the FDA's food safety activities.
In his address, President Obama noted
that the US is "one of the safest places in
the world" to buy groceries at a
supermarket. However, in recent years,
a number of problems have emerged,
beginning with contaminated spinach in
2006, salmonella in peppers and
possibly tomatoes in 2008 and illnesses
and deaths from peanut products earlier
this year, the president said.
"Worse, these incidents reflect a
troubling trend that's seen the average
number of outbreaks from contaminated
produce and other foods grow to nearly
350 a year - up from 100 a year in the
early 1990s," Mr. Obama said. "Part of the
reason is that many of the laws and regulations governing food safety in America
have not been updated since they were
written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt.
"It's also because our system of inspection and enforcement is spread out so
widely among so many people that it's difficult for different parts of our government
to share information, work together, and
solve problems. And it's also because FDA
has been underfunded and understaffed
in recent years, leaving the agency with
the resources to inspect just 7,000 of our
150,000 food processing plants and
BAKING & SNACK / April 2009

warehouses each year. That means roughly 95% of them go uninspected."
Describing the status quo as "unacceptable," President Obama said the
situation would change. He announced
that he was naming Margaret Hamburg as commissioner of the FDA.
He also named Joshua Sharfstein as
deputy commissioner.
"Their critical work and the critical
work of the FDA they lead will be part of
a larger effort taken up by a new Food
Safety Working Group I am creating,"
the president said. "This Working Group

will bring together cabinet secretaries
and senior officials to advise me on how
we can upgrade our food safety laws
for the 21st century; foster coordination
throughout government; and ensure
that we are not just designing laws that
will keep the American people safe, but
enforcing them. And I expect this group
to report back to me with recommendations as soon as possible."
Specific steps to enhance food safety detailed by President Obama included spending $1 billion to modernize laboratories
and ensure that FDA is adequately staffed.

FDA issues guidance on
peanut-derived products
The Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) issued safety guidelines for
companies that use a peanut-derived
product as an ingredient in a food
product and said it may seize products that test positive for Salmonella.
The action comes in response to an
outbreak linked to foods made by the
Peanut Corp. of America that has contributed to nine deaths, more than 650
illnesses and 3,235 product recalls.
"We are issuing this guidance because
recent outbreaks indicate the potential
for food-borne illness resulting from
the consumption of foods containing peanut-derived products if a
peanut-derived product used
as an ingredient is contaminated with Salmonella species,"
FDA said.
In its guidance, FDA said
operators of retail
and food service establishments should not
assume that routine food
preparation processes will render
products safe for sale to the consumer. FDA added that the presence
of Salmonella may depend on whether

an ingredient with a very low water
activity is rehydrated or what the highest temperature is in the coldest part of
the product during the baking process
and the actual duration that the product
experienced that temperature.
Because the procedures used to
make finished products may not
adequately reduce the presence of
Salmonella, FDA urged food manufacturers to buy peanut-derived
products "only from suppliers with
validated processes in place to
adequately reduce the presence of
Salmonella species."
FDA also indicated that the
most reliable way to determine whether a manufacturing process would
reduce the presence of Salmonella in a food
product containing a peanut-derived
product is to conduct a
scientific study to determine
the death rate of Salmonella
species in the product using microbiological challenge studies.
The full guidance is available at
www.cfsan.fda.gov.

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov

Baking & Snack - April 2009

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